Writer’s Spotlight: Oscar Rhea
The Bad Days Make the Best Stories
Hi Globetrotters. My name is . . . Oscar Rhea. Or is that just my pen name? I’ll never tell.
I love to travel because . . . there are only so many people you can be if you stay home forever. If you leave, if you wander, if you surround yourself with the unfamiliar, then you can stare into a stranger’s eyes when you look in the mirror, and decide who you want that stranger to be.
My number one travel activity is . . . sitting on a train — or a boat, or the side of a mountain, or the last bar stool in a dark, crowded sushi bar — and scribbling madly on my notepad in between sips of coffee or mouthfuls of raw fish. On a good day, I can convince myself I’m Hemingway. On a bad day, I’m still alive
I come from . . . a Canadian suburb, where on a crisp day in winter, your skin will freeze in ninety seconds. Perhaps that’s why I travel: to escape the certain death of Februarys.
I work as a . . . bartender. It’s the best place to steal other people’s stories when I’m in between creating my own.
The best place I’ve been is . . . Vietnam. The country is simultaneously exotic and friendly, beautiful and complicated, enshrined in a history of death and violence and yet undeniably alive. It is everything I ever wanted a faraway land to be, and it’s the only place where nobody bats an eye when you eat beef noodle soup for breakfast.
In my spare time, I like to . . . listen as someone I’ve never heard of before and will probably never see again pours her heart into a guitar, or a piano, or a ________ microphone.
My top travel tip is . . . to remember that the bad days make the best stories.
If I could live somewhere else, I’d live in . . . 161 West 4th Street in the West Village, New York, New York, in 1962.
My favorite way to travel is . . . in a train when it rains, in a Westphalia van full of hippies when the sun shines, and on the back of motorbike when the night comes and the big cities ignite their neons.
Three lessons I’ve learned from traveling are . . .
1) Learn how to say yes in a foreign language, and say it as often as you can.
2) Don’t be afraid to travel alone, because you won’t be alone for long.
3) Bring toilet paper.
I’m also a writer of absolute nonsense, in case you’re interested: